A tale of two restaurants

By Jennifer Wohletz and Maren Tarro

It was the best of meals, it was the worst of meals … we had everything before us, we had nothing before us. OK, so maybe that’s a little on the dramatic side, but in many ways dining at Zinc brought to mind the contrasts Dickens was so fond of fictionalizing, so read this with a British accent.

We’re not known for luxurious desserts—it’s not our thing. We get too full too fast. We prefer savory salts, the occasional soft, ripe, bloomy artisan French cheese and hard after-dinner liqueurs. We gorge on calories in other ways. But for the holidays, when the fruitcakes and weird chocolate logs start showing up on people’s tables, there are some far easier, more awesome ways to serve festive treats—and get drunk at the same time. We’ve become obsessed with baking apples in apple beer.